By Colin ClerkinThis is a perennial question I get asked, so I thought it might be useful if I addressed it as a blog post. The simple truth, as I've learned over the years, is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" answer, I'm afraid.

But what IS important is that you ensure that there is at least some consistent focus on marketing activities within your practice every week or month. Therapist training generally does not address business matters; the focus is invariably on teaching the skills that you need to perform as an effective therapist, and rightly so! But as independent practice becomes more of the norm here in the UK, the need to address the “how” of independent practice becomes more important too.

In his book “The E-Myth Revisited”, Michael Gerber brilliantly addresses how every independent business person actually needs to be 3 different “people” within their day-to-day business activity. I’ve written more about this and reviewed “The E-Myth Revisited” in a previous blog post – The Three People You Need in Your Business - but Gerber’s point is that you can’t run a practice purely by being the therapist (or Technician, in his example) … you need to have a Manager-element that can focus on bringing in the business, and that is where marketing comes in.

By Colin ClerkinOn Friday (July 12th), I hosted my first live Webinar. As some people have asked me, in the run-up to this, what a webinar is, let me explain: it's a live online seminar, where you give a talk or presentation to people who have signed up from around the country (or the globe, even) to attend via their computers. You make your presentation; they can see your slides and you (via your webcam); and they can interact with you via a live online chat system ... don't you love technology!

It's been something I've been meaning to do for some time, but time and technology seemed to conspire together to hold me back!

But when I "attended" a colleague's webinar earlier this year, I was impressed by the online technology they had used - called MeetingBurner- and decided to try it out. Initially, I signed up for the Basic account - it's free and allows you to create webinars with up to 10 attendees.

Have you ever had a call about a potential referral that sounds promising,but as you ask a few more questions of the referrer, it becomes clear that it's not something that fits your particular skills or interests, or it is just a total mis-match for your services? Isn't that a pain? You have that initial surge of excitement at a new referral. Then, as you realise it isn't something you can tackle, you maybe even have that fleeting thought "well, I could give it a go" (especially if business is slow!), but you know in your heart it would be wrong, both for you AND for the client, so you have to respectfully decline.

Think, too, what effect this has on the referrer who has taken the time to call you to put this referral your way. How is your declining of their offer of a new piece of work likely to impact on their decision process next time they are considering who to send a new referral to. In most instances (hopefully), they will respect your integrity as a professional and accept that while the match was wrong before, that won't necessarily be the case next time. But it is also possible, for some, that they will look elsewhere, and you'll drop down their preferred service provider list!

But what else could you have done? It's wrong to accept a referral where you know the work is outside your area of expertise, so you've acted professionally and done the right thing. But could your integrity cost you work in the future?

Not if you prepare the ground better and make sure that, from the start of your engagement with your potential referrers, you work to educate them as to just what type of work you do and which types of clients you're best suited to working with. This is the "A for Appropriate" element of my "Get on their R.A.D.A.R" message.

Be clear from the start when marketing your practice just what it is that you do, who you work with, when and where, and make this explicit on your website and in your communications with clients and potential referrers from their first encounter with you. This way, you will ensure that the enquiries that come your way are more appropriate for your services and give you the opportunity to shine, meeting the clients immediate needs and boosting your reputation with your referral partners so that you see more and more work coming your way.

Go on, write down your preferred client criteria right now. Begin to explore how you can share this pen picture with your current referral partners, then build this detail into all your promotional efforts and see your practice grow with clients who you want to work with and for whom you know you can achieve the best results. How good will that feel?

For more ideas about how to grow your business, check out my Business Breakthrough Programme and learn how Mirror Coaching can help you get on your clients' RADAR more effectively.

So you've done the initial "hard" work to get on your potential new referrers' R.A.D.A.R., as outlined in my earlier posts expanding on this favourite marketing mantra of mine(!). Your service has achieved some recognition with them and they have seen that your service is available to meet their clients' needs within a timeframe that is acceptable ... and so a first referral from them lands on your desk.

Congratulations, you are on your way! However, you'd be wrong to think that you've cracked it at this stage, because up to this, all you've been doing is raising your profile. Now ... you have to prove yourself worthy. Now that you've received this first referral from your new referral partner, if you want them to consider you for further referrals in the future, you actually have to deliver on the promise of your original message.

How do you do this? Quite simply, you do exactly what you have told them you will do for their client ... and more. If you've told them you'll offer an initial appointment within 48 hours of the referral, you offer that initial appointment within 48 hours. If you've explained that you'll provide a written initial assessment following the first meeting with the client, you make sure that you get that off to them within a day of seeing their client. If you created any additional expectations of the service that you will provide to their clients, you make damn sure that you meet those expectations ... and more!

Indeed, over-delivery, if it is at all possible, should be your ultimate goal for your service. If you've said you would write to the client with an appointment, telephone them instead and make the arrangements in person, following up with a confirmation letter, copied to the referrer. If you've agreed to submit an end-of-treatment report, contact the referrer a few sessions into the treatment phase to give them an update (again, a telephone call is better for this than a letter, as it allows for that personal contact that builds your recognition and establishes a relationship that you can build on in the future). Provide your client with additional resources over and above your sessional interaction, such as some take-away literature on their problem presentation that allows them to have a better understanding of why they are having the difficulties they are having and how the treatment you are presenting to them can relieve this.

Over-deliver, and keep your referrer updated on progress across your involvement with their client so that they can clearly see that you are fulfilling the promise that your early contact offered to them. In doing so, you allow them to feel positive about theirdecision to give your service a chance; you help them to look good in the eyes of their client, who had relied on them to find them someone who could meet their needs; and, most importantly for you and your service, you increase significantly the likelihood that they will refer to you the next time they have someone in front of them who is in need of the type of services you provide. DELIVERY is probably the most critical component of my R.A.D.A.R. message ... get this right, and all your efforts to be noticed (and bring in more referrals) will pay off, over and over again. For more ideas about how to build your business, check out my Business Breakthrough Programme and learn how Mirror Coaching can help you to maximise your referrals and grow a sustainable practice.

As you strive to raise your profileto bring in more enquiries and referrals to help build your practices, you may think that getting your website launched will be a catalyst for this. But that website needs to be found and that requires that your site moves up the search rankings. And we all know how hard that is, don't we?

So when Google gives you a gift like Google Authorship, that can move you up those rankings with only a little effort on your part, you really should pay attention, shouldn't you? Demian Farnworth's article, "10 Reasons Writers Should Claim Google Authorship Markup" on Copyblogger.com, explains how you can go about taking advantage of this new tool and, trust me, you need to put these ideas into action. I have, so let's see how it has worked out for me ...

The screen-grab (above right) shows the 1st page of a Google search for "therapy practice building", one of the areas I coach on, and, as you can see, that's me, 5th organic item (of 13.5 million results!) on the front page. And, as the only item with a photo attached (a feature of Authorship), the likelihood that you might check my page out first is greatly increased, because the presence of a photo draws the eye to that item. It also features my name prominently, so adding to my authority as an author and "expert" in this field, and helping visitors trust that this is a legitimate site from a legitimate business. Can't be bad, eh?

And it cost me nothing more than a little bit of time to understand the steps I needed to follow ... and then to get on and follow them. All within a few weeks of applying the ideThere is still more I need to do, I know, but this is a very good starting point. And you can do it too, so why not get reading and get implementing!

To expand on these ideas further and build your business with some 1-to-1 support, check out my Business Breakthrough Programme, where I outline some of the key steps that you need to take to help grow your business and achieve all you want to with your practice.

The 2nd letter we need to consider, as I expand upon my RADAR acronym, is "A" (as I hope you'll have guessed!), which stands for ... Availability.Once referral partners begin to recognise that your service might be just what their clients need, the next important element in their decision process will be based on whether or not they perceive that you are available to offer their clients an appointment sooner rather than later.We will all have experienced the frustration of calling someone to access their services - plumber, dentist, builder, NHS Mental Health Team (ahem!) - only to be told that they can see you ... but not for a couple of days/weeks/months (delete as experienced). But if that is how our referral partners come to experience their dealings with us ... where we respond to their enquiry to say we can see their client "in a month or two" ... the likelihood that they will call us next time they have someone who fits our criteria is greatly reduced. Private clients don't expect to have to wait for their service. I'm not saying that's ...

In a recent blog post, I outlined the basic elements that I believe you need to take into account if you want to ensure that you are on your potential referrers' RADAR, and so increase the likelihood that they will send work your way.In this series of posts, I want to begin to break down my RADAR* acronym by looking at what each of the letters stand for in a little more depth.

So here, let's look at my first "R": Recognition ... Have you ever found yourself talking to someone whom you would like to have refer clients to your service only to find that, as you mention some aspect of your service, they look surprised, and say something along the lines of "Oh, I never knew you did that sort of work!"? They may know that you are a "therapist", a "coach", a "psychologist" or whatever, but they have failed to connect the dots and link your work with possibly resolving a particular need of one of their contacts. Yet, you had "assumed" that if they knew of your professional role, they would obviously "know" who you work with and what you do?

This, or a variation of this, is an easy mistake to make. Maybe we've simply "hung out our shingle" and assumed that would be enough to bring the clients flocking to our door? Experience tells us differently, though, doesn't it? The reality is that we can't assume anything about our business really; we need to be proactive, from the start, in our efforts to let the world (and particularly our potential referral partners) know just what it is that we do, where and with whom ... and then make it clear to them just what they can do to help their clients to access our services.

Getting the word out to these referral partners can take many forms - networking meetings, giving presentations to defined groups, writing articles, advertising in targeted media, mail shots and personal contacts or introductions, to name a few - but what each of these methods have in common is that they build recognition of your services by letting others know more about just what it is you offer, how it can solve a given problem for them, and what they need to do to access it. This knowledge, once made clear to your potential referrers (or even directly to clients), ensures that your business is now on their RADAR, and as they encounter a client for whom your service fits the bill, they connect those dots much more easily, realising that you have what they or their client needs, leading them to the obvious choice then of making that referral to you.

To expand on these ideas and grow your business, check out my Business Breakthrough Programme, where I outline some key steps and present some tools that you can use to help increase your visibility and recognition factor with potential referrers.

Marketing has been defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services.”Essentially, it is any activity that lets your clients know that you exist … it is how you get on their RADAR.

As regular readers of my various writings will know, in relation to service providers, I frequently rattle on about “getting on your referrers’ radar” … and recently, this got me thinking about just how to expand on this concept, because I do believe it is so important to your business. So … I put my thinking cap on and came up with an acronym based on that key word RADAR (which I know is already an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging, but bear with me on this) …